Cross-cultural Reading the Mind in the Eyes: An fMRI Investigation

Abstract

The ability to infer others' thoughts, intentions, and feelings is regarded as uniquely human. Over the last few decades, this remarkable ability has captivated the attention of philosophers, primatologists, clinical and developmental psychologists, anthropologists, social psychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists. Most would agree that the capacity to reason about others' mental states is innately prepared, essential for successful human social interaction. Whether this ability is culturally tuned, however, remains entirely uncharted on both the behavioral and neural levels. Here we provide the first behavioral and neural evidence for an intracultural advantage (better performance for same- vs. other-culture) in mental state decoding in a sample of native Japanese and white American participants. We examined the neural correlates of this intracultural advantage using fMRI, revealing greater bilateral posterior superior temporal sulci recruitment during same- versus other-culture mental state decoding in both cultural groups. These findings offer preliminary support for cultural consistency in the neurological architecture subserving high-level mental state reasoning, as well as its differential recruitment based on cultural group membership.

Brain, Behavior, and Culture: Insights from Cognition, Perception, and Emotion

“…Similarly, Albright et al (1997) observed that American and Chinese perceivers agreed in their perceptions of extraversion and agreeableness for the faces of same-culture and other-culture faces, and Cunningham et al (1995) observed consistency between American and Taiwanese perceivers in judgments of facial attractiveness. Finally, Rule et al (2010) found that American and Japanese perceivers agreed in their judgments of personality traits (dominance likeability, and trustworthiness) and facial maturity from the faces of American and Japanese political candidates. In addition, their judgments were significantly related to the percentage of votes that the candidates received in their respective elections.…”

“…Employing a task known as the "reading the mind in the eyes" test (Baron-Cohen et al 2001), Adams et al (2010) found that both American and Japanese participants showed responses in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) -a region previously implicated in understanding others' intentions -when inferring the mental states of others. The particular task involved presenting American and Japanese participants with photos of American and Japanese faces, cropped so that only the eyes were visible.…”

“…Dominance can be readily observed from nonverbal cues (Schmid Mast and Hall 2004) and exerts particularly strong effects upon the way that individuals interact, as well as the establishment of status hierarchies (Schmid Mast 2001). Moreover, dominance is consistently recognized across cultures (Rule et al 2010). Given the cultural differences in the treatment of status between collectivistic and individualistic cultures, it therefore seems possible that cues to dominance and submission might hold different meanings for members of collectivist (e.g., East Asian) and individualist (e.g., Western) cultures.…”

The cultural neuroscience of person perception

“…This would make sense given that the mental states of one's own culture are likely to be more ecologically significant than the mental states of a different culture (see above, and Weisbuch and Ambady, 2008). Using both the original Caucasian-face RME developed by Baron-Cohen et al (2001) and an analogous, Asian-face RME developed for their study, Adams et al (2009) found that American participants performed better with the Caucasian RME and that Japanese participants performed better with the Asian RME. Such results were mirrored in neural activity as well.…”

“…Such results were mirrored in neural activity as well. Adams et al (2009) found that own-culture RME judgments (relative to those of the other culture) selectively engaged the superior temporal sulcus (STS), a brain region important for theory of mind. Specifically, American participants showed stronger bilateral STS activity when inferring the mental states of American targets, as opposed to Japanese targets, and Japanese participants showed stronger bilateral STS activity when inferring the mental states of Japanese targets, as opposed to American targets.…”